Articles by Cristina Falcão

A paradigm is the conceptual framework upon which we build our world; it is built upon past experiences; if we are not willing to make shifts in our paradigms, we will remain stagnate in our growth; a paradigm shift is a change from one way of thinking to another; it is something that does not happen like self generation it is driven by change. Culture change is not simply about how we see...Full Article »

In spite of all the scientific and technology advances, the 21 st  century generation may be the first generation to not outlive their parents. Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than 1 billion adults overweight - at least 300 million of them clinically obese - and is a major contributor to the global burden of chronic disease and disability. Often coexisting,...Full Article »

Medical device growth is outpacing pharma industry. Europe accounts for about 30% of world revenues for medical equipment, the regulations for translation of medical devices in the EU affect a large portion of global device distribution; there are challenges in translation and communicating science in a multilingual world dominated by the de facto language of English. The EU alone has 23 mother...Full Article »

There is a time and the time is now and is right for me… (1) Welcome to the age of personalized medicine. With the mapping of the entire human genome, completed in 2003, many doors were unlocked and one of them was personalized medicine – prescription of tailored drugs and therapies based on our specific genetic code. The key benefits of PM (Personalized Medicine) are better...Full Article »

The patient is the most important stakeholder in healthcare. Every day patients are questioning their treatment options and making product choices through their own research. With orphan diseases,  experience, information and treatment can often be hard for the patient and their caregivers to come by. In this article Pharma IQ highlights the patient's perspective of...Full Article »

Economies of scale come in many flavors. Including the oddity flavor where the number of manufactured products decreases and the size of markets shrink. Orphan drugs are economies of scale’ oddity flavor – a smaller market is as profitable as a large one, as long as the expensive therapies fall into reimbursement plans, in other words, as long as there are diagnostic tests...Full Article »

Marketing exclusivity in EU and U.S.A provided a monopolistic market for orphan drugs without “me-too”/generics competitors, to pharma companies. Orphan drug laws and the pharma industry made great contributions towards the cure of millions of people offering from uncommon and frequently life-threatening diseases. However, it is necessary to strike a new balance between incentives...Full Article »

"I do believe Marsellus Wallace, my husband, your boss, told you to take ME out and do WHATEVER I WANTED. Now I wanna dance, I wanna win. I want that trophy, so dance good". Mia Wallace, Pulp Fiction (1994) Big Pharma never ceases to take prodigies out of the hat! Would you believe that many drugs were "helped" if not "invented" by the anonymous person in the crowd?...Full Article »

Pharma Fallacies ?  Mais c'est le secret de Polichinelle ! Bien entendu, les apparences sont sauves…. “Puff,” the mighty, magic outsourcing dragon is the “jack-of-all-trades” but master of none, trying to make sure that all roads lead to globalisation. Strategic coherence provides greater differentiation, enables the right form of scale, focuses limited...Full Article »

What were the odds that the drug makers would roll the dice and have not only a financial mega hit but in Mergers & Acquisitions and Offshore-Production two “star is born “stories in a single show? The whole world is moving to more connected and open innovation and Big Pharma keeps pace, despite the global financial crunch, world jobless charts, and a labor market at sixes and...Full Article »

Globalisation’s growth and prevalence of the pharmaceutical market, calls for proactive approaches to manage its risks, namely the size and complexity of value chains and the increased labour market competition. In the networked economy of the 21st century, Big Pharma looks for a new world of collaborative sourcing strategies to exploit the cost advantages of R&D facilities...Full Article »